


135. vantage point

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [311]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 00:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10842849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “Go home, Art,” Sarah says. He nods at her; he holsters his gun and leaves. That means there’s no way for Sarah to get home, isn’t there, but that’s fine. She follows Helena back to the gun.





	135. vantage point

They’re walking away from Helena’s set-up sniper rifle, Helena’s head settled on Sarah’s shoulder, when Helena stops and says: “Wait.”

“What?” Sarah says, startled despite herself. She’s still coming down from her desperate panic-high, that terrified place where she knows exactly what she has to do to survive and she does it, easy. Her brain still thinks there is a gun to talk Helena down from.

“The gun,” Helena says, like she can read Sarah’s mind. “I need it.”

“Helena—” Sarah says, straining towards gentleness but, despite herself, only sounding exhausted and annoyed. She knows Helena can hear it because she breaks out of their weird half-hug and shoves her hands in the pockets of Felix’s jacket. She starts stepping backwards towards the gun.

“Quick,” she says. “I have to take it. I will be quick. Promise.”

Art tilts Sarah a look, like: _I could still shoot her_. The thought is a dull rock in Sarah’s stomach, heavy and familiar and indigestible. She shakes her head. When she follows Helena back to the gun she passes by Art, and she presses light fingertips to his shoulder and murmurs “Go home, I can handle it.”

“You sure?”

“Go home, Art,” Sarah says. He nods at her; he holsters his gun and leaves. That means there’s no way for Sarah to get home, isn’t there, but that’s fine. She follows Helena back to the gun.

“I won’t shoot Rachel,” Helena says, not making eye contact. She breaks the gun down to pieces like it’s easy, like it’s something anyone could know.

“I know,” Sarah says. She sits on the table Helena’s chair is perched on, squints across the street. She can’t see anything. Somewhere out there Paul is gasping, familiar, and Rachel is smirking satisfied at her victory and she doesn’t even know that Sarah saved her life. Sarah saved Rachel’s life; she regrets it. The thought makes her laugh, just because there’s no other reaction to it.

“What is funny,” Helena says.

“I really, really wish you could’ve killed her,” Sarah says, because it’s true.

Helena blinks away from the gun and looks at Sarah. Her mouth is so funny when it’s red, even though Rachel has the same mouth and on her it hadn’t been funny at all. “There is time,” says the mouth. “I can kill her later. Once brother- _sestra_ is no longer in jail. If you want.”

Sarah tilts her head in a way that is not quite a nod, in case Helena interprets that as a bargain struck. She watches the city lights. If she borrowed Helena’s binoculars she could see Rachel right now, horribly alive.

“Is that not weird to you?” she says.

Helena hums a question. The gun is dissembled, and she drags a rucksack around her chair and starts dropping pieces into it haphazardly.

“That I’d tell you to kill her,” Sarah says. “That you’d kill her.”

Helena drops one piece into the bag, less out of intent and more – it seems – completely by accident. “No,” she says, sounding puzzled. “I am very good at killing things.”

“Yeah, but,” Sarah says. “You’re good at other things too, yeah?”

“Not really.” Helena picks up the binoculars, drops them in the bag. There’s a doll head – god, it’s Rachel’s – and she gives it a sloppy, wet kiss before she throws it across the room. Sarah hears it bounce a few times and then it’s gone.

“Sure you are,” Sarah says, dropping down off the table and watching Helena hop out of the chair and then off of the table and then hit the ground. She slings the rucksack over her shoulders and goes towards the door. Sarah follows her. “You’re good at,” she says, and stops.

“Eating,” Helena says, and laughs to herself. The sound echoes as they go down the stairs.

“Yeah, there you go,” Sarah says, following her down.

“You can’t help anybody with eating, Sarah,” Helena says – patiently, like she’s explaining things to a child. “Eating takes food away. Killing just takes bad things away, so that they don’t bother you anymore. Food isn’t ever a bad thing. Ever. Food is like a very nice present. A body is also like a present, except I know how to make bodies.”

The logic is tangled, and Helena seems unbothered by it. Sarah wishes, suddenly, that she had a granola bar to give her. Maybe this all would have been solved sooner if Sarah had a granola bar. Instead she had the truth, which didn’t taste nearly as good.

“You don’t need to help all the time,” Sarah says as they keep on clattering down the stairs. She wishes they were on the same step but Helena is ahead of her, so Sarah can’t see her face. “You know that, right? I just—” she stops. After a second Helena’s footsteps stop too, but she doesn’t turn around.

“I just want you to be here,” Sarah says. Still true. Still sour.

“There needs to be a place for me,” Helena says. Without seeing her face Sarah can’t tell how she sounds. “Otherwise you could stop feeding me. I don’t know how to make a place any other way but making bad things go away.” She turns her head just enough for Sarah to see the edge of her nose and nothing else. “I want to give you nice things. I want to eat, and not because you feel bad that I’m hungry.”

Before Sarah can say anything, Helena _runs_ down the stairs. She vanishes around a corner before Sarah can respond, and the only sound is Helena’s feet and the click-jingle of gun pieces bumping together.

“I love you,” Sarah says, and the footsteps stop. She doesn’t know why she said it. Because she’s deeply, terribly sad. Because she can’t guarantee that there’s going to be a place for Helena, because she can’t guarantee that there’s going to be food for Helena. Because she can’t see Helena at all and that makes her easier to love. She doesn’t know. She meant it. It’s easier when Helena isn’t here but suddenly Sarah wishes she was, wishes she was back so Sarah could hug her. She’d know the words to say if Helena was close enough. _Thank you_ , maybe, or _I’m so proud of you_.

She takes her time down the stairs and sees Helena stopped with one foot in the air, back still to Sarah. Sarah almost gets close enough and then Helena is hopping forward again, something urgent and terrified in the set of her shoulders.

_You don’t have to run away from this_. Sarah could say that, if Helena was close enough, if that wouldn’t make Sarah the biggest hypocrite in the world. She trails her hand on the railing and follows:

Ground floor. They burst out into the street and the world is still here, and it’s real, and nobody knows that Helena would kill any of them in a second if Sarah asked her—

If Sarah told her to. Sarah’s finger like a gun barrel to point, Helena a pulled trigger. Sarah doesn’t ask; Sarah would never ask. She puts her hands in her pockets and follows to where Helena is trying to convince her motorbike to get back up on two wheels.

“I’m gonna head back,” Sarah says, “to S’ place, you know where that is, yeah?”

Helena stares at her, wide-eyed. “I thought we were going together,” she says. Her hands are vulnerable curled around the handlebars.

“Oh,” Sarah says, and: “yeah. Yeah, ‘course.” Helena deflates, rummages around and procures a helmet. She watches solemnly until Sarah has put it on and then she slings herself over the bike. Sarah gets on behind her. Here they are, together.

“Sarah,” Helena says, without turning around.

“Yeah.”

“I love you too.” The motorbike engine starts snarling before the words are done, and Helena pulls them out into the street – Sarah clings on tight, and they’re flying through city traffic like it isn’t even there. Sarah rests her head against Helena’s back. They move so fast that the whole world blurs.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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